Will, I'm curious-- have you ever read "The Right Nation" by Micklethwait (yes, that one) and Wooldridge (yes, that one)? Their prediction, oddly, is the opposite of that predicting Democratic hegemony. I don't know who's right-- though I've long thought the political-market idea is solid-- but it does seem to me that one major equilibrizing force, if true, is the proposition that liberal redistributive powers derive directly from the vigor and resulting wealth of capitalism. The more redistributive and restrictive they get, the more they do evoke opposition, yes, but also the more the country loses the wealth for them to redistribute. If so, Margaret Thatcher's revolution in Britain was inevitable.

And, too, redistribution suffers from a basic fairness problem. True, sometimes unjust things are done by rich people for profit, but they're not the only ones punished with high taxes, nor are their victims the only ones benefitted. That's efficient, but can that be justice? I think most wealth is legitimately won, so it's also unjust to steal wealth from the rich and give it to people who neither by their work, thrift or intelligence earned it.

The way the Left has always overcome this argument about injustice is by arguing that it’s making up for other injustices. Just as with affirmative action, that’s wearing thin. Robber-baron ideals of capitalism during the late 19th century suffered an erosion that was glacial in pace but so powerful in effect, caused by too many hosannas to it and too many abuses, that it didn’t burn out for many decades, and still hasn’t entirely. I think that same kind of erosion, though perhaps not comparable in scale, is occurring with the "progressive narrative."

Really, the problem is that in a rationalist democracy the immediate and more provable is what is politically profitable, leaving longer-term but more powerful poverty-fighting things so attenuated from political profit as financial education and community-building out of the realm of serious civic action.

I'm 22 years old; I can't figure out for the life of me how I benefit from the Democratic agenda. My money taken to fund the retirement and health benefits of people who were unwilling (note unwilling, not unable) to save money to cover these expenses.

Why do young people religiously vote for a party that's put them on the wrong side of a huge redistribution?

You do realize if you work the rest of your life you'll pay SS and Medicare taxes that you claim and re-coup when you retire? (Depending on how long you live.)

Social Security is actually in decent shape. A reduction in health care costs could make Medicare solvent. Both need an overhaul. But both programs keep the elderly from begging and dying in the street(see 'Great Depression').

From your post (and name) it appears you'll have all the money you need for private health insurance and living expenses when you get flushed from the work force in your 50's or early 60's. And the decades that follow.

The media need not worry while the people will decide the outcome. The media,on the other hand,should analyse what is right and in the interest of the nation and post the intricacies of issues to make the voters aware,in other words educate them.The media anyway ultimately not responsible for the outcome.

This article is just a lot of bull. It makes no sense whatsoever. It only confirms how the whole political process is media-driven. It is no wonder American citizens have forgotten, or was never educated, about the constitution or the civic duty responsibilites of each American governed by the constitution of the United States of America. It seems to me the average American lacks an awareness of their civic duties. Every time I see the lack of voter turn out in the elections it proves my point. I think each American citizen should form their opinions of the issues based on the information presented by the candidates, not on what the media or the so called polls report. Then most importantly, all Americans should exercise their right as set forth in the constitution and perform their civic duty to vote for their candidates of choice. After all Americans do not go to the polls to vote for the media to run our government.

For one thing, many on both sides of the aisle will retort that the media sort of does run our government, or at least each party is so integral with its favoured outlet that the distinction is severely blurred.

For another, is it not possible that many Americans forget their civic duty because they feel the resultant civic functions forget them? On a day-to-day basis, most people just go about their daily lives, trying to make a buck, trying to raise their kids, trying to keep up with their aging parents, trying to keep food on table and roof over head. What some fellow from South Dakota believes about abortion or the level of congressional scrutiny over the New York Mercantile Exchange just doesn't really enter into that daily equation.

We have low voter turnout because the vote and its consequences are relatively inconsequential to American life. We are free enough that we are able to conduct our affairs without consistent involvement in political process, so only those who have the luxury, energy, or inclination to focus on what happens in D.C. are the ones getting the attention on the news and in the halls of power.

It should say something that Barack Obama was elected by less than 33% of vote-eligible Americans (63% turnout, times 52% of the vote). Is that really a mandate from the masses? George W. Bush didn't have any more marching orders either time. Instead of decrying Americans for not caring about what happens to their country, I should like to point out to those who care too much that they are not positioning themselves in line with the needs and wants of a majority of the nation, and that they are the ones in need of reevaluation.

At least when I was young, we learned about the Constitution and civic duty in school. (Repeated lessons over several years, actually.) So how does the media get faulted for the ignorance you decry? I sure don't recall an explicit decision to make that kind of education a media responsibility.

So if there is massive ignorance (and I don't disagree there), the blame ought to go to the schools, don't you think?

I am impressed that my Massachusetts school in the 1960s taught everyone to read and write, and most people were conversant with the basics of logical thinking and science.

We had civics, which studied what democracy, Nazism, socialism and Communism really mean. We knew how the government works, we learned about the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and separation of church and state. How badly have the schools in the rest of the country been performing?

My schools in California at around the same time did similarly. But it appears that Lawrence finds that currently (in Indiana?) things are not so good. It would be interesting to know if he is involved with the schools there. Or if he is just underwhelmed by what he sees elsewhere.

The reason none of these things matter is because the election is going to be, as the first Obama term has been, a referrendum on race in America.

Racially-intolerant Americans will continue, sometimes unwittingly via confirmation-bias and subconscious, to oppose everything associated with The President. This is what has fueled the "everything is wrong" resurgence of libertarianism/anarchism.

Others will attempt, in vain, to frame the debate in terms of issues and potential policy initiatives and alternatives. But it won't matter.

It's no use debating anymore - even the commenters here are so entrenched that even when they concede a point, they don't concede, but instead shift to some higher order qualification to rationalize an objection (see recent shift from denial of externalities altogether to obscure, pseudo-austrian distinctions like real vs. pecuniary which only have relevance in make-believe perfect closed markets).

I suppose the debates might be interesting. I'm not paying any attention to the hyperbolic ad campaigns. In the end, it won't really matter much either way. The economy is all that really matters and congress will continue to be in gridlock and the fed is content. The U.S. recovery will continue to outpace the rest of the developed world, especially now that housing and construction have bottomed and are gaining momentum. As much as I think the President deserves a second term, the hand he was dealt (including his race) may just be too much to overcome.

Seriously, though, the obsession with race conspiracy that you express is just as ludicrous as is the idea of racial superiority that a very small minority honestly does act upon. You take a high-and-mighty stance as one of the powerless vanguard of objective issues weighers, while delivering an uninformed, assumptive, and honestly quite petty condemnation of those who come to a different conclusion than you.

If you really can round up these hordes of militant racists, I'll gladly join you in educating them on the proper way to behave in public, if not how to think about the world around them. Until you can seriously find these people however, I have trouble being lumped in with them just by virtue of where I'm from, or of things I believe in, and so do millions of others like me.

Dude, from the day President Obama was elected, the cries of "we want our country back!" came from older whites. Back from what? Gingrich got roaring applause in the primary for referring to the President as "the food stamp president". Add to that my own anecdotes, which will do as much (as little) to convince or get you to admit as anything.

But, whatever. It's thinly veiled in plausible deniability. If you don't see it, you probably never will. You'll rationalize the logic of social Darwinism and anarchy, grabbing at long disproven philoshical and economic arguments like straws (gold standard, deregulation, etc.), skipping from rudimentary oversimplifications to third order unrealistic theories to rebut the more realistic middle ground.

If you don't see racism in this, you've probably never seen racism or studied the tactics that were used to divide labor in industrial cities at the beginning of the last century. Oh well. Ignorance is bliss, etc.

So what if people don't like Obama because he's half-black. The term "racist" has taken on a hyperbolic overtone meant to demonize and discredit a person at every level. Unfortunately, that movement has largely succeeded.

What you fail to take into account, as so many other people do, is that racism isn't as damning a fault as the media/social bandwagon would have you believe, and it certainly is not a black and white issue. Racism comes in shades of gray.

My Grandfather, who use to call his neighbor a jigaboo, would also share summer barbeque, shovel the snow from his walk, watch his home when away, and in general enjoy a cordial friendship with him. But when refering to african americans in general would often revert to some derogatory term from his past. Was my Grandpa racist, to a degree, definitely, was it his defining characteristic, or what people remember about him, not at all.

Is it any less racist to vote for President Obama because he's black? A decision or judgement based on the color of a person's skin, whether positive or negative is racist. Yet, there is no broad condemnation of those racist americans who simply voted for Barak Obama because of his black half.

As long as racism isn't a person's defining characteristic (like a neo-nazi) it is a minor infraction at most. An infraction that draws far more attention than it deserves.

Crimson, I live in a significantly black area of Philadelphia. If they were smart, the Democrats would gag you and chain you in an attic somewhere to keep your pro-black racism and insanely liberal views from driving independent white voters like me away from them.

Where was all this concern for economic management from the rightist politicians now braying so loudly when Bush ran a freight train through Clinton's sound fiscal policies? Why didn't the Conservatives say much when Bush bailed out banks by the trillions, but complain loudly when Obama bails out homeowners? Shall we discuss the birthers?

That said, it's debatable whether the nutjobs will really make a difference at the polls. They probably would never have voted Democrat to begin with.

While I agree that there is an element of truth to what you say, it's a stretch to suggest the "God and Guns" rednecks will really decide elections. White racists don't vote Democrat. And Black racists don't vote Republican.

Does it make a difference who's in office? Obama expanded Bush's health care entitlements, followed up on Bush's printing/borrowing money to save/stimulate the economy and doubled down on Bush's war on terror.

What else is there? Oh yeah, Obama continued Bush's ramping up of the national debt while unemployment remains at Bush levels.

If you want change, you need to think outside the box: consider the ideas championed by Ron Paul.

Obama completed the draw down of the nation building in Iraq. The plan is in place to draw down Afghanistan. He ran on ending Iraq and targeting Al Queda more specifically, with some success considering we got Bin Laden.

As repugnant as drone strikes are its a scalpel compared to the bulldozer of the Bush era. There are some obvious key differences in how Bush and Obama have prosecuted the effort against terrorism.

Obama campaigned on a smaller more specific, targeted policy. He has fulfilled that campaign promise. Bush left office with two large, expensive conflicts unfinished.

Obama has taken to killing American citizens extra judicially, in clear violation of the Constitution. Obama claims (as did Bush) that we are in a worldwide war on terror, a war with no battlefields in which anyone, anywhere, and at any time is subject to assassination on the President's say-so.

For a former Constitutional scholar, that's a bit of a departure from due process.

At what point is an American citizen considered fair game when actively plotting to commit mass murder in the U.S from a foreign country? To my knowledge only two Americans have been killed by drone strikes, Al-Alwaki and in a separate incident his son was collateral damage. Both strikes were in Yemen.

It seems slightly unfair to throw around the term "killing Americans" as if it's common or being done haphazardly. The strikes are approved by Obama but the evidence against the targets is being gathered by a wide range of security agencies. Drones are the best option when putting in Special Forces is too risky or a larger, conventional bombing would cause greater collateral damage.

This is a hypothetical observation and not aimed at you personally. But it would be interesting to see how these same targeted attacks would have been spun by a Republican administration and the right leaning media in the U.S.

My guess is they would have been dismissed as traitors (rightly so) and the 'killing Americans' and 'Constitution' angle would never have made it into the national dialogue.

Ron Paul offers simple, intuitive, and utterly incorrect solutions to complex problems. Kind of like a guy who helpfully tells you to turn your motorbike left by pointing the front wheel left. (Try this at speed, and you will find yourself in the right-hand ditch).

But, in that case, what are we journalist and pundit types supposed to talk about?

It would seem that you could spend a lot of time speculating about why all of the issues seem to have no traction. And why the voters don't care about the things that you all figure should matter to them. Certainly there are plenty of issues which pundits have brought up . . . and which the public is cheerfully ignoring. You could work thru one a week, and still not run out of issues before election day.

It's close first off because the candidates are of the same caliber. Reagan in 1984 or Clinton in 1992 had a clear advantage against their opponents just as personalities. Both performed far better in the polls than circumstances should have dictated. Reagan overcame the economy, and Clinton his party. The person on the ticket, beyond either their party or their positions, matters.

Obama in '08 was an excellent face for the election, although his personal inexperience were also a problem. But Obama in '12 has neither one of these. He's neither a part term Senator or a captivating speaker anymore. Romney is also rather blah. You could replace either '12 Obama or Romney with any middling politico and they'd do as well in the election. It's close because the public is choosing between Ford and Kerry.

The other reason that it's close is that each is playing very conservatively. Both are going for a 51 percent victory, which is why the campaign is so stable. No 50 State Strategy from these guys. Low risk, low reward politics is very boring to watch, and I imagine frustrating to have to cover as a pundit.

It's not just likeability. Grant wasn't particularly likeable but he won two elections. As far as I know, Washington wasn't known for his conviviality.

Obama is liked, but he does lack a certain gravitas. I think Romney is also seen as being a bit more serious, if only because he has so very little flash. He has the admirable qualities of a dweeb, and Obama the negative qualities of a cheerleader.

Sounds rather like Bush and Gore, doesn't it. (Except with Obama having the advantage of being the incumbant.) Although I wonder how to reconcile the idea of Obama as the cheerleader type with his reputation for being "cool and cerebral....

Gore was kind of an incumbent too. He also ran with a much stronger economy behind him, although also Clinton's peccadilloes weighing him down.

Eh. It's a tight race and it's going to stay that way. Whoever wins, I think 49 percent of this country is not going to be happy. The candidates may change their positions, or their campaigns, but they aren't going to suddenly become the kind of candidates who are personally broadly liked and respected. Those are the candidates who win by more than a few percentage points in our fairly evenly divided country.

Honestly I think that more than 49% will be unhappy regardless of who wins because I think that both candidates will pick up votes from their bases that are cast simply to avoid the other guy getting in. Lots of Rs will vote for Romney because they don't want Obama - not because they love Romney - and definitely vise-versa. Neither candidate has that much love from their base. Romney's not 'conservative' enough and Obama has let the left down with his pandering to Wall st and extension of Bush's executive powers and (for me) not going the whole hog with a single-payer healthcare approach that could at least start to address the issue of cost as well as coverage.

I don't think either party drives public consciousness to the extent you suggest. Arguably, FDR and Reagan did but they can also be seen as the culmination of a movement incited by Keynes and Friedman/Buckley respectively. Goldwater showed what happens when politics gets ahead of public consciousness.

"If Democrats can manage to make redistribution from taxpayers to public employees, and from young people to old people, seem somehow super-sexy and hyper-patriotic, America will become nothing but free government health-care clinics as far the eye can see."

You somehow seem to be under the delusion that Republicans give a damn about young people.

As opposed to the baby boomers, who had a great economy to save up on but didn't, and so they want to force the youth of the US-- whom are currently suffering the highest unemployment in sixty years-- to pay their lazy asses so they can sit around sipping beer in cushy retirement?

The last sentence is (a) a complete non-sequitur, (b) completely inaccurate (has Mr. Wilkinson ever been to a country with national health insurance?) and (c) blatant propaganda.

The talking heads should enter into a saner debate over the relative benefits of free-market capitalism versus social programs. Mr Wilkinson can be rather good at this when he is not being lazy. There is a middle ground which can better meet the duty of government, as spelt out in the Constitution, to "promote the general Welfare ... to ourselves and our Posterity". This duty is NOT limited to the rich or the healthy.

As an American who has been through this cycle since the 80's, the contest will come down to who gets caught in the goofiest looking photo-- there you will find the loser. I'm sure some strategists on both sides have a notion to show that their candidate "gets" the other side, and is planning a photo op right now that will terminate the candidate's electability: for Obama, some idiot has an idea to set him off in the coutry somewhere clad in LL Bean, toting a shotgun; on the the other side a similar idiot envisions having Romney pose and dress as a cook in diner. Whichever side caves in first will be the loser.

I'm intrigued by the Buckeye slump scenario: Suppose Ohio State loses three in a row in October. A week before the election, Urban Meyer has heart palpitations and resigns as Head Coach in order to spend more time with his family. Columbus goes into a deep depression, or perhaps a fit of collective rage, and forgets to vote. Without those Democratic votes in Franklin County (in Republican counties the Buckeye collapse is blamed on Obama) Romney takes Ohio!

Wait a minute. I thought redistribution of income from young people to old people was the policy of both parties. Isn't one of the attack lines against Obamacare is that it reduces spending on Medicare?

I don't think so. I heard a Crossroads GPS attack ad that is being used in Montana. It accuses Jon Tester of supporting Obamacare, which "reduces spending on Medicare by $500 B" or something on that order. And I even think this line was used by Eric Cantor in yesterday's floor "debate" on repealing Obamacare. Now the intent of the Ryan budget is to constrain (i.e., reduce) the growth of Medicare spending. But hey, intellectual consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind, especially when there's an election to be won.
And on the Ryan proposal, does anyone really think that the value of his Medicare vouchers won't be raised sometime in the future if the Senior lobby starts howling that they are insufficient to cover the real costs of medical care?

"[W]e’ve still got four months until the election", Mr Klein sighs. "Four months in which we’re going to be covering the campaign also nonstop. So help me out here: What’s going to matter between now and then?"

What matters is that Mr. Klein and his ilk get a paycheck for the next 4 months, just for blabbering.

Help YOU out?
Heck, I have a tough enough time doing my own job, why should I do yours?

Maybe all of the immigrants and other demographic groups that Democrats are counting on for their tidal change are learning too quickly (for Democrats) that in America free markets and small government are the key to growth for all; that what their children need more than Democrats' handouts and regulation is Republicans' economic growth. And yes, it certainly helps that many socially conservative republicans have put down their megaphones and let the economy be the focus lately.

Assuming that RyanDonovan is following the usual line of thought from small government proponents, he's not saying that small government is the cause of growth.

He's supposing that the key to growth is the government staying out of the way of the private sector and that sort of thing. It's not an argument along the lines of "the smaller the percentage of GDP is spent on government, the better the economy will do."

It's hard to pinpoint, but easier to identify as something smaller than the current. Let's knock back government's share of GDP a few percentage points, maybe to where it was in 1990 or 1980, and see what happens.

Maybe all of the immigrants and other demographic groups that Democrats are counting on for their tidal change are learning too quickly (for Democrats) that in America free markets and small government are the key to growth for all; that what their children need more than Democrats' handouts and regulation is Republicans' economic growth. And yes, it certainly helps that many socially conservative republicans have put down their megaphones and let the economy be the focus lately.

No - every identifiable ethnic group save non-Hispanic, non-Jewish Whites will vote 70:30 or better for Obama. The only issue is how the White WASP/Catholics split. Nothing else matters. In a few more years even that won't matter, Señor.